The laboratory was nauseatingly sterile.

  After the soot and stench of the boiler hall, the smell of alcohol and ozone felt unnatural—like we had been shoved inside an enormous refrigerator.

  The light was white. Perfectly even. Not a single shadow.

  I felt like a lump of mud dropped onto a clean hospital sheet.

  The walls were lined with transparent tanks.

  Inside them, floating in cloudy fluid, were the things Silas called evolution.

  An arm stitched to some kind of pump.

  An eyeball with a bundle of fiber-optic threads where the optic nerve should have been.

  I tried not to look.

  But in one of the tanks I spotted a hand.

  An exact copy of mine.

  Only burned black.

  My stomach twisted.

  “Do you like it?” Silas’s voice came from nowhere—and everywhere at once. “The history of your mistakes, Iron. And my victories.”

  At the center of the room stood something halfway between an operating table and a pilot’s chair.

  A man had been literally fused into it.

  There was very little left of Silas.

  A pale face. A torso. One arm.

  Everything else had been replaced by cables, hoses, and hydraulic actuators that vanished into the floor and ceiling.

  He wasn’t sitting in the chair.

  He was part of it.

  “Malek… we should leave,” Ephrem whispered. His knuckles were white around the staff. The old man looked like he was about to throw up.

  “You won’t be leaving,” Silas said calmly.

  A low hum rippled through the room.

  My ears popped.

  Zeno suddenly jerked.

  Sparks burst from his joints. The robot let out a long, mournful whistle and collapsed sideways.

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  Offline.

  Electromagnetic trap.

  “Zeno!” I stepped toward him—

  But heavy clamps dropped from the ceiling.

  One slammed Ephrem against the wall, locking across his chest. The old man gasped as his feet lifted off the floor.

  “It’s very simple, Iron,” Silas said, watching me with empty eyes. “Your skill. The Will to Live. Give me access to the core of your system. Show me how your brain processes reality.”

  He tilted his head slightly.

  “And I’ll release the old man.”

  “I don’t need his death,” he added quietly. “I need your code.”

  “Go to hell,” I spat.

  “Then I’ll extract it myself.”

  Four thin manipulators descended from the ceiling.

  Laser scalpels glowed at their tips.

  They buzzed like a swarm of rabid hornets.

  I darted aside—but one beam slashed across my thigh.

  There was barely any pain.

  Just the smell of burning meat.

  And a cold sting.

  They moved faster than I could think.

  And in that moment I understood something.

  If I didn’t activate the skill now—fully—we weren’t leaving this room alive.

  But I remembered what Ephrem had said.

  Too long.

  Too deep.

  And you might not come back.

  To hell with it.

  I tore off every limiter inside my head.

  It wasn’t cinematic.

  The moment I crossed that line, the world didn’t simply slow down.

  It became structural.

  Later Ephrem would say my pupils faded instantly—turning into two lifeless gray-white discs, like dead fish eyes.

  I never saw it.

  To me the world looked the same.

  Just… more logical.

  The price came instantly.

  Something inside my skull popped.

  Thick, almost black blood poured from my nose.

  My titanium arm began vibrating at such frequency that the skin where metal met flesh started splitting and smoking.

  My neurons were literally frying, unable to handle the flood of data.

  I didn’t run.

  I simply stepped aside exactly one millimeter before a laser sliced through the air.

  Roll.

  Twist.

  My body moved on its own.

  I barely kept up with what it was doing.

  Every second in that state felt like an hour of torture.

  I reached Silas’s chair.

  My fingers plunged into the control panel.

  The world exploded in white noise.

  Electric current ripped through me, blowing the skill out like a fuse.

  I collapsed onto the tiles.

  The skill shut off.

  The gray steel drained from my eyes, returning their normal color.

  And the pain came back.

  It felt like boiling lead had been poured into my brain.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  My body shook violently.

  My right arm wouldn’t respond at all.

  The metal had turned red-hot.

  “Still alive?” Ephrem ran toward me once the clamps released him.

  The old man looked terrified.

  I tried to answer.

  Only a hoarse groan came out.

  My throat burned.

  “Malek… damn,” Ephrem muttered, helping me sit up carefully while staring at my face. “Say… is that some kind of new trick of yours?”

  “What are you talking about?” I wiped blood from my chin.

  My head was still ringing, but my vision was normal.

  “Your eyes. When you charged that spider thing… they turned into something else. Gray. Empty. Like a dead fish.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “I thought the strain finally cracked your skull. But now they’re normal again.”

  He squinted at me.

  “Some kind of intimidation effect? Visual style?”

  “I don’t know, old man…” I leaned against the wall. “I didn’t notice anything. The world just… changed.”

  I looked at my hands.

  They were shaking.

  The price of that victory had been higher than I’d expected.

  My brain throbbed.

  And I understood something clearly.

  A few more full-power activations like that…

  …and I might never wake up again.

  The system inside me demanded too much fuel.

  My life.

  “Style, huh…” I muttered, trying to stand. “Fine. Let it be style.”

  “As long as that style doesn’t bury us.”

  Silas sat frozen in his chair.

  Alive.

  But his mind—overloaded by the feedback—had turned to mush.

  We picked up Zeno and slowly moved toward the exit.

  I walked leaning on Ephrem’s shoulder.

  Every step hurt.

  Ahead of us lay Sector Zero.